Spellbreaker
by violetvapours
Summary: Bedwarmer turned spellbreaker, Sigyn returns to Asgard to repay a debt to her old master, only to find that she remains the only cure for Loki's persistent insomnia. An erotic elegy for pre-Fall Loki with a Sigyn of less reputable origin, though no less loyal. TDW
1. Prologue

_So I like to joke to my boyfriend that I'm his bedwarmer. Some months ago he mused, 'I'd like to brand you with a belly ring.' My imagination abounds with impure thoughts._

* * *

**Prologue**

* * *

'When do we start?'

With a nod to his untrustworthy ally, Thor answered, 'Another holds the key for your release – as soon as you convince her to use it.'

His terms met, the Crown Prince retreated from Loki's cell without another word, signalling for the emergence of an enrobed figure from the corridor. The prisoner's eyes narrowed suspiciously as he peered up at the slight sorcerer Thor had enlisted to disable the cursed walls containing him. It was not like his brother to play games.

As the hood was pulled back, Loki's expression froze. He became freshly aware of his haggard appearance slumped on the floor, surrounded by broken furniture and shattered glassware. His head turned back against the wall, eyes drawing closed as melancholy swelled up to engulf him again.

She was the last person in all the Realms he could suffer right now.

'Truly, I've become a captive audience for all the grievances in the Realm,' he remarked dryly, as his raw eyelids parted to stare numbly at a broken chair. She was silent. He cleared his throat with a sniff. 'I trust you've learned much in Vanaheim?' he enquired more politely.

'I made you something,' his old pupil answered her master in a whisper.

Loki's hand curled into a fist at his side. 'Show me,' he echoed, his lips reminiscing a smile of pride.

The sorceress reached into her straining bodice, and produced a delicate glass key, which she had forged in fulfilment of Thor's caper.

'It's beautiful,' he recited, silver tongue getting the better of him in her presence. He stilled it with a scowl, and turned his concern to the bottom line. 'What do you want for my freedom? I've nothing but the clothes on my back.'

She sank softly onto the topmost stone step before his cell, bringing herself to his level. She was blinking back tears at the memory he had evoked of their first meeting, just three years ago.

'Why did you cast me away?'

Her voice intoned a forlorn melody. It pained him into malice. Parched laughter hissed from his cracked lips like smoke.

'That's my price,' she insisted with quiet determination.

His own voice was hoarse with menace. 'I'm the _Prince__ of lies_, my tongue knows not the taste of truth.'

'Then lie to me.'

How she knew him. Loki twisted to face her and oblige the invitation with all the venom that was expected of him. 'You were a toy I tired of. An unfit consort for a King.'

The words he could not say spun so easily into lies. Suddenly, Frigga's expression of dignified hurt sprang into sharp relief in his memory and a scream spasmed in his throat.

In contrast to the departed Allmother, his companion's lips curved with satisfaction. She rose to the task before her, laying her hands to the invisible barrier between them. Her fingertips read the ensorcelled glass as delicately as they had once traced his skin. Finally she located the weakest point in the Allfather's bindings. There, she wedged the glasswork firmly.

The entire web of _seidr_ illuminated from corner to corner in resistance, and then glimmered, falling dim.

Loki rolled to his feet, scraping himself up off the floor. She watched him surreptitiously as he adjusted himself, raking his lank hair back behind his shoulders. Her eyes flicked to his wrist as she glimpsed a strange streak of blood beneath his torn sleeve – and then the sight was gone. His tattered clothing shimmered as he refashioned his armoured leather surcoat – a sleeker iteration, stripped of the wide metal accents and better suited to the subterfuge of the task ahead.

Finally he drew his hand back sharply behind him, fingers spread, and whipped his arm forward. The motion hurled a toppled-over table through the defunct glass with savage force, and the sorceress stepped deftly aside as it shot past her in a hail of shards.

The vengeful creature who stepped from the cell was alltogether a different man to the playful Prince she had served.

And he knew so. As they faced each other Loki's calculating gaze flickered across her in fleeting strokes that avoided her own. He observed the midnight fall of her hair, the fair curve of her cleavage, the silver embroidery threading her plum-hued gown. He could not bear to speak her name, so split was his tongue. But he owed it to her. Loki drew breath deep into his gut.

'You have my gratitude, Sigyn.'

Then his jaw sealed shut; he would say no more. She glanced away in resignation, and turned toward the staircase at the end of the corridor. He followed, presumably to be met with Thor. At the foot of the stairs she held back to admit him. 'After you, Highness,' she offered with the old formality.

Repressing a twinge of nostalgia, Loki ascended. Then he felt her fingers slip the key into his, and a mischievous grin leapt across his face. 'Not part of your bargain with Thor,' he guessed under his breath, sliding the key beneath his sleeve.

'I repay my debts in full,' Sigyn declared tenderly at his back.

He could never again be contained here. Loki's pulse quickened as possibilities for new schemes weaved in the back of his mind, picking up the threads of abandoned ambitions.

'You don't happen to have a dagger in that bodice do you?' he ventured.

She did not reply, and he glanced behind him to find her gone.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

* * *

In the leadup to Thor's coronation, Loki found that discontentment dogged him in all he did.

He frowned down at the wench presently beneath him. She was a terrible actress. Her discomfort showed in the stiffness of her posture and her half-hearted moans. It was becoming more common with each bedwarmer he called upon. He could see that he was a chore from the moment they appeared, in the flicker of disappointment in their eyes when they saw it was he who had summoned them, and not his mighty brother or the dashing Fandral or some high-ranking brute in Asgard's army. They went through the motions with him like cold dolls.

With a sigh he snatched up the bell by which she'd been summoned. With a jingle she vanished from the sheets, and Loki slumped into his pillows, settling in for another restless night.

The following morning, the Prince was in the pleasure parlour demanding someone different. He glanced around the tawdry rooms, scanning the array of lounging fallen beauties sold into service by their families for knowing a man before they were wed.

Through a trailing haze of incense vapour, a dark speck drew his eye. She sat cross-legged upon the cushioned seat in a nearby window, her eyes trained on the pages of a book in her lap. Another maid rested behind her, determinedly drawing the dense waves of her ebony hair into an intricate braid across the side of her head, exposing the cream skin of her shoulder. She looked vaguely Vanir, he thought as his observation wandered over her petite form, provocatively swathed in a sheer lilac gown that clung to generous curves. Despite herself she persisted with her reading as if in protest of her companion's ministrations, her sleek brows drawn into a scowl against each tug of her locks. Her eyes smouldered with kohl like warpaint, warding off the appetites of most men. But there were no men like Loki.

The amusing sight pulled his lips into a smirk. 'That one,' he indicated to the Madame with a nod toward the window.

'Oh no, Your Highness,' the Madame objected. 'She's newly acquired and is yet untrained. Perhaps I can suggest –'

'Who better to teach her my ways? Pierce her,' he instructed, referring to the navel jewel that branded palace bedwarmers.

The woman bowed her braided head. 'Yes, Your Highness.'

By evening, Loki returned from supper to find a tiny silver bell resting on his bedchamber desk. He read lounging in an armchair by the fire a while, occasionally glancing from the text to the waiting bell beside him. He found himself tempted by its promise sooner than he'd intended.

Setting the book down, Loki stood and took up the shiny new bell. He smoothed his tunic, and ran a swift hand through his hair, slicking back an errant strand. Then he released a steady breath and swivelled his wrist.

At the toll an unsteady figure appeared with a gasp, and stumbled before him. He darted forward to receive her into his arms. She peered up at him as he steadied her back onto her feet, her eyes wild with shock. He searched for disappointment, for disgust, but found only naked alarm. It was a start.

* * *

'Good evening,' greeted a silky voice. Sigyn's eyes shot up to regard the man who would have her this night.

Her skin prickled. She had been summoned by the dark Prince – the night to his brother's day. Scholar, strategist – sorcerer. _Silvertongue_. She had only seen the mysterious second son at a far distance, dressed in ceremonial armour with his face obscured by a horned helmet. She gazed up at him now, and found herself stricken by sharp pale features set with sleek raven hair, dark as her own. He looked refined and deadly as a bird of prey.

She broke her stare. 'Your Highness,' she breathed and dropped into a curtsey, her heart now thudding unevenly beneath her breast. She'd never been anywhere near royalty. She rose, glancing around the Prince's chamber. It was furnished in dark polished wood, and the bluestone walls lined with green and gold tapestries. Her attention was quickly drawn to an ornate four-poster draped in emerald and laden with dark furs. The room smelled of leather and ink and musty parchment. Like the great library, she thought, and her heartbeat steadied.

'Here.' A goblet appeared in his hand, which he promptly passed into hers.

She lifted it to her lips, but paused. 'What's in it?'

'Just wine,' he assured her. 'I promise.'

She took a hesitant sip and he asked her name.

The tall Prince then took a seat, levelling his gaze to her shorter stature. 'Sigyn. I am a fitful sleeper. May I call upon you to warm my bed when my sleep is troubled?'

True enough, faint shadows were bruised beneath his jade green eyes as they implored her so earnestly. A flawless diplomat. She faltered in her answer, her brows knitting in confusion. 'I didn't believe we had a choice,' she dared in a tone kept carefully pacific.

'_You _do,' he played firmly.

Her confusion deepened. This was not the interaction she'd been hastily prepared for. She still burned – the jewel in her belly, the contraceptive potion in her throat, and the Madame's rushed advice in her ear. 'Why?'

'I've found I cannot enjoy the company of those who do not enjoy mine,' His Highness explained. 'Others have proven disappointing, to say the least.'

She hesitated for a moment, deciding whether or not to provide the answer to his dissatisfaction. Then she offered furtively, 'They fear your _siedr_.'

His lips jerked into a resigned sneer. 'Is that so. And do you?'

A lie leapt into her throat, but died on her tongue. Her eyes fell to his boots. 'No,' she admitted in a whisper.

Immediately, his interest was piqued and he leant forward in his chair. 'Show me something,' he requested.

Sigyn glanced up at him sharply, his invitation alerting her to waning instincts. Shows of her talent had never been called upon – rather, met with discomfort and distrust. Her hand curled to a fist at her side.

Suddenly the fireplace and all the torches were extinguished, plunging them into darkness. A moment later, violet flames flared in their place. The light illuminated her storm grey eyes, before dimming to a low flicker, her gaze with it.

He cocked his head, regarding her with curiosity. 'You should be in Vanaheim, being tutored.'

She stared into the fireplace. 'I should.' Bitterness steeled her voice.

'What happened?' he probed.

The fire he had seen flare briefly in her eyes returned. 'I was betrothed. I didn't care,' she declared haughtily.

If there was one way to annul your betrothal to a man you didn't want, it was to be spoiled by a man you did. Sigyn drew her bottom lip between her teeth, remembering how she had teased the stable hand until he bent her over a bench with her skirts pushed up to her hips and took her burning maidenhood for himself, until his cream spilled down her thighs and she was thoroughly sullied. Whether it was an entirely sound decision remained to be seen.

Prince Loki arched an eyebrow at her implication. 'And look where it got you,' he taunted, a sly glint in his eye.

Far from feeling shamed, the corner of her mouth quirked cheekily. 'You're not so bad, Your Highness,' she returned.

He hissed with laughter. 'I can see myself enjoying your company,' he confessed. 'If you would share it.'

Sigyn's expression softened. Her first master was far more charming than she'd expected. 'I'm considering it,' she admitted, and then, in resignation to her fate, raised her hand to return the flames to their natural state.

The Prince was suddenly gone. She immediately felt him at her back, her hand now captured by his. 'Leave it,' he murmured coolly. 'It's beautiful.'

Something stirred in her blood as his breath brushed her bare shoulder, and she felt the tensed muscles in her back melt in submission. And just like that, his spell was cast.

He lowered her hand. 'I'm retiring,' he announced. 'Join me if you wish.'

He made to withdraw, but Sigyn gripped his long fingers before they slid from hers. '_W__hy me?_' she questioned hastily. 'I've no training.'

'I wanted something of my own,' was his cryptic reply. Then he added, 'Know this, Sigyn. If you join me, I will force nothing on you. But you'll be touched by no other. You will be mine.'

He lingered beside her with his hand still in hers – until she realised he was waiting on her to release him and her heart lurched in her chest. Their hands broke apart, and Sigyn twisted to peer at him through a fall of hair as he sidled over to the canopied bed, snuffing out the torches with a wave of his hand as he went. He turned away and vanished his attire, drawing her gaze to the lean contours of his shoulders as he leant to throw back the covers. He boasted none of his brother's bulk, hinting at more mysterious strengths. Desire bloomed in her blood, intoxicating as the wine she'd sipped.

Despite her mesmerised instincts, Sigyn endeavoured to consider her options. The Prince offered an attractive arrangement, in which she would not have to submit to the lust of countless repulsive nobles. Her father had called her a whore for succumbing to the attentions of a stable hand. Now, she could lay with a powerful sorcerer from whom she might pick up a trick or two.

Her bare feet crept forward.

The dark linen was silk-soft on her skin as she slid beneath the weight of the coverlet and settled against one of many pillows. Lain beside him, Sigyn took a few moments to steady her breath, before she enquired, 'What troubles your sleep, Your Highness?'

'Rumination,' he answered.

'What does a Prince think about?' she wondered aloud.

'His situation.'

Sigyn stared up at the lush canopy above her. 'I don't think I'd mind your situation, myself,' she shared.

In the dim firelight she saw his hand rise to massage his temples wearily. 'You've no idea, little crow.'

Odin had his ravens. Loki would have his own.

The sobriquet tugged Sigyn's lips into a grin. She thought of how a forced engagement had snatched away her ambitions, driving her to desperate desires that left her life in ruin, only for her to stumble into the bed of one Prince of Asgard. 'Well, you can't control everything,' she advised. 'Sometimes all you can do is react.'

He sighed. 'Spare me your sensible wisdom.'

'Something to distract you then. Can I show you a ritual of my mother's that soothed me to sleep as a child?' she suggested.

'Very well.'

'Turn to your side,' Sigyn bade him. She reached through she sheets for his back as it faced her, and tentatively set near-trembling fingertips to his skin. He remained still, so she drew them down incrementally, hesitant to touch him. She squeezed her eyes shut, chiding herself, _He wouldn't have branded you if he didn't want you to touch him_.

The taut muscles beneath her fingers relaxed. 'Please continue.'

Releasing a tense breath, she began to caress his back with featherlight brushstrokes, eventually daring to expand her reach across his shoulder and down his bicep. To her relief, she felt him expel a few slow, deep breaths as he succumbed to her attentions. A leathery musk wafted from his skin, and she couldn't help but sniff the tinged air with sly curiosity, rolling her lips together in appreciation.

As she listened to the rhythm of his breath as it slowly went shallower, Sigyn drifted, lulled by the faint flicker of violet fire.

True to his word, Prince Loki made no move on her in the night. Having arrived in his quarters fraught with anticipation, Sigyn felt somewhat disappointed.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

Loki woke to find his bedwarmer gone. He furrowed his brow groggily, sure he had not yet rung the bell to dismiss her from his chambers.

He sat up and glanced around to find Sigyn sitting curled up in the adjacent window with her knees folded beneath her, cushioned by the emerald drapes as she rested against the ledge. She stared out at the sunrise from behind the glass with the wistful resignation of a bird between the bars of their cage. For a moment something tugged at him – guilt, for imprisoning her in service beneath her talents. But he was selfish, and her freedom did not suit him. He just wanted something of his own. He just wanted to sleep.

He watched her in silence for a few moments, reflecting on their meeting the night before. She had appeared so demure, but within a few exchanges he had drawn out a thrilling flavour of poison. It was delicious. He liked her; already she had proven different to her predecessors. He had slept soundly for the first time in months.

It occurred to him to greet her with a prank. A smile playing on his lips, Loki reached out and conjured an illusory serpent onto the floor beneath her dangling foot. Turning his wrist, he sent it slithering up her leg. Sigyn jumped sharply, emitting a cry of fright and cowering against the window. His laughter was arrested though, when she threw out her hand and vanished the snake.

Loki's eyes narrowed. She had dispelled _his_ illusion. She simply _undid_ it.

Sigyn was staring at him now, stunned, her chest still rising and falling in time with her pulse.

Loki decided to test her ability. Without a word he summoned something bigger. Something monstrous.

Sigyn's gaze widened to take in the sight of an enormous Frost Giant as it expanded in the middle of the Prince's bedchamber and towered over her, scarred and scarlet eyed. Pursing her lips in concentration, she banished it easily, peering at Loki through the dissolving structure with a confused expression.

'You're remarkably good at that.'

'I seem to be much better at altering _seidr_ than casting it,' she replied. 'May I ask the purpose of these tests, Your Highness?'

'My own amusement.'

'Oh,' she snorted. 'How else may I amuse you, Your Highness?' she asked playfully, daring a dark glance from beneath her lashes.

Regarding her with raised brows, Loki slipped from the sheets, his nudity shimmering into raiment. He approached her resting place, snatching up a few grapes from the tray on the table as he crossed the floor. Intent on a slow but sure pursuit of her affection, he declined to continue the flirtation. Instead he said, 'It would amuse me to see you smile, instead of staring out that window like you want to jump from it.'

Her eyes fell. 'I don't want to jump out of it,' Sigyn sighed with a shake of her head. 'I just want to keep stretching my wings. You know, keep studying ...'

Loki registered the yearning in her voice, and found such a kindred desire hard to ignore. It was nothing to teach the girl a few tricks. In fact, it could be quite an amusing venture. He spread his hands. 'Then let's start.'

She lit up immediately, agape with disbelief. 'You mean it?'

'I do.'

'Aren't – aren't you busy?' she enquired.

'Not til the afternoon.'

Loki broke off a bunch of grapes and proffered them to her, and Sigyn stood to accept them. As he considered a worthy test of her skills, she asked, 'What's the most complex illusion you've made?'

He stilled, and his lips twisted into a smirk. Then as he stood before her, a smooth voice uncoiled around her ear. 'You wouldn't know it if you saw it.'

Sigyn whirled around to find Prince Loki – a second Loki, standing behind her wearing the same smirk, his hands clasped behind his back.

Loki watched Sigyn's face become rapt with delight as she smiled up at the duplicate he had conjured, her educated observation roving every detail of the illusion. Her smile was like a ray of sunlight through winter cloud, and it warmed him as it did her stark features.

She turned back to the real Prince to find two more, and her eyes widened. Backing away, she jumped at the sight of another beside her. Soon, everywhere she turned more Princes had appeared until the chamber was populated by identical grinning Princes, more illusions than she could undo filing around her as she tried to determine which set of eyes to face.

Finally His Highness emerged from the crowd and stalked toward her while the others closed in around them, fixing her with a stare of such intensity it drove a shiver up her spine. She knew him by the pores across his nose and the shadow of stubble beneath his shaven chin as he drew close. He began to chuckle, light and melodious. Sigyn's breath caught in her throat as he leant in to her, his fine lips parting to catch hers, and her eyes fell closed –

But she felt nothing … except for a pair of hands drawing her own behind her back, and then cool metal encircling her wrists with a _click_. Her eyes flew open to find what she'd thought was the Prince gone, along with every other illusion that had pressed in so suffocatingly just a moment ago.

'You've a gift for breaking spells, Sigyn,' said the Prince at her back. 'Let's see you break these.'

He circled around her to watch his captive, her straining bodice heaving as she struggled against the cuffs, even as she sensed the thrum of _seidr_ within their locks. With a scowl Sigyn gathered her will and sent out her sorcery in a frantic lash, clawing at the locks, but they seemed to tighten at her attack. She swayed and sank to her knees before him, sweat prickling upon her brow.

'Sorcerers will try to fortify the weakest point in their enchantments,' he guided her.

Sigyn reached deeper into the enchantments she sensed at her back. She hissed a steady breath as she began to map out their structure in her mind's eye as she sealed closed her own. With a tendril of will she traced the strength of each point like the links in a chain, seeking ...

_There_, she felt a knot of _seidr _binding a fragile link. Narrowing her will to a needlepoint, she began to pick at it, teasing the fortification apart. It frayed under her working, until at last the weakness it patched was exposed. She was so close. She struck at the enchantment, its current fizzling –

Sigyn released a gasp, and felt the cuffs loosen around her wrists. She pulled her hands free triumphantly, dropping the clinking cuffs at the master sorcerer's feet.

Loki could not help but smile down at his student as he watched relief and satisfaction rush into her expression. Where he could not offer her freedom, he gave the illusion of escape. A meagre comfort, he knew, but comfort all the same. He extended his hand.

'Clever girl. You've earned your next lesson.'


	4. Chapter 3

_This is going to get very sexy and then very __sad__ very quickly. Let me know what you think ;)_

* * *

**Chapter 3**

* * *

Loki stripped and descended into the steaming water rippling in the large sunken bath at the centre of the tiled floor. He was in good spirits. Following the not-so-unexpected interruption to his Coronation, Thor had predictably made a spectacle of his own immaturity, playing directly into Loki's plan. Feeling playful and wondering if he could make a little progress with his bedwarmer, he summoned her bell to himself, and rang it.

With a splash and a cry she appeared in the water before him. Her fingers grasped after a book that tumbled from her hands but it dropped beneath the bubbles. Laughter erupted from Loki as she gaped up at him with an expression of abject dismay.

He leant forward and fished the sopping book from beneath the foam. He glanced down at the familiar title – one he had committed to memory years ago. 'You can have mine,' he offered. Then he sank back down against the edge of the bath. 'I ride into Jotunheim with my fool of a brother tomorrow. Would you bathe me?'

Colour tinged her cheeks as she tensed with embarrassment, but he flashed a winsome smile before turning to settle over the edge of the bath on his elbows.

Sigyn waded through the water toward the waiting Prince. She took up a nearby cloth and dipped it in the water. 'Are you excited for battle?' she asked, determined to keep her voice steady, squeezing a stream of fragrant water down his back.

He released a contented sigh. 'I'm excited to misdirect an opponent with a flex of my fingers,' he replied. 'To snatch shards of _seidr _from the air and send them into his back. To pivot into the path of an oncomer, my blade twisting between his ribs before he even sights me, and slip away before his companion can defend him …'

Sigyn's ministrations had slowed as he spoke. She pictured him, moving swift as the wind through squads of enemies, transforming them into corpses. She'd mistaken him for a scholar, when he was an artist. 'You make it sound like art,' she observed in a voice hushed with awe. 'Like a dance.'

He turned and resettled against the bath's edge, facing her once more with a fervent gaze. 'It's nothing less.'

Then he dropped a glance to the cloth in her hand, prompting her to lift it to his chest and continue. The warmth of the water seeped through her clinging gown to heat her flesh with a fever that rose to her vapour-misted cheeks, and she grew faint with curiosity for the feel of his skin against her lips. The Prince became a dark mirage, glistening and lean as a whiplash, hair falling in his eyes in damp strings.

Sigyn's heartbeat only quickened the longer she doted on him, drawing ever closer to the moment she was sure he would seize her. But though his eyes glittered with mischief, he did not lift a finger to her. Did he see her dilated pupils, her flushed cheeks, her swollen lips? Had she not agreed to be his when she joined him that first night? Sigyn longed for the slightest touch, the barest brush of his hand to give her permission to throw herself upon him. He stayed coiled as a snake, seemingly content just to watch her squirm. With each minute that passed she began to realise that the game he was playing did not involve him taking what he wanted. By the Nine, he had her.

When he was satisfied of her torture Loki plucked the cloth from her fingers and set it on the bath's edge. 'I'm retiring,' he announced as he had the first night he called her. 'Join me if you wish.'

Water streamed down his skin as he stepped up out of the bath, summoning a towel around his waist. Sigyn followed as he strode out to the bedchamber. With a wave of her hand she charmed dry the sodden lengths of her gown, and padded out after him.

'Would you care to fix the fire?'

Sigyn fanned the flames with a motion of her fingers, cooling their hue to dark violet. Warm purple glimmers played on the shadowed walls, and mingled with the rich green fabrics of the canopy as he parted it for her.

When she followed the Prince beneath the sheets, she found she could not settle beside him. Anticipation jangled her nerves, leaving her too restless to imagine sleep. She tossed and turned, unable to keep her hips still. When she could take no more of her drumming heart, Sigyn turned to him. 'Your Highness?' she breathed into the dark.

'Yes?' the voice in the darkness breathed back.

'I'm yours, aren't I?'

A moment of silence. 'That depends.' He rolled onto his elbow. When he spoke she could feel the rich vibration in his chest; his breath on her lips. 'Would you come whenever I need beauty to distract me?' he asked. 'Could you read my skin with yours as closely as you read one of your books? Would you make a King of a Prince – a _K__ingdom_ of your body?'

'Yes,' she swore in a hiss, aching to taste him.

'_Show me_.'

Sigyn had imagined trying to kiss him the first time with a tentative brush of her lips, politely acquainting master and servant. Instead, there was a rustle of sheets and Sigyn found herself devouring him hungrily, breathlessly – and finally his hands took her, and his kisses were deep and steady, reassuring her fevered need. She realised faintly, in the back of her mind, that it was all his design. To have her not just comply, but crave. She found that she barely cared.

He nudged her onto her back.

She felt the straps of her nightdress slide off her shoulders. Strangely cool hands traced her form in the dark, dragging the gown down her legs as they went, his mouth following in their path as he savoured her flushed skin. At first she lay paralysed, utterly mesmerised by the Prince's unhurried, leisurely consumption – as though he'd already planned every movement.

A knee parted her thighs and his mouth returned to hers. Long fingers brushed over the jewel in her navel and parted her slick folds below, dipping inside her as his tongue slipped between her lips, drawing her sigh against his mouth. Then his tongue left hers, and travelled downward ... downward ... to lavish her quim with decadent languor, tousled strands of his hair falling forward to tickle her stomach.

Before long Sigyn was clawing at his shoulders, pulling him up that he might sate the ache he'd cursed upon her. His weight shifted obligingly. A hand slid beneath her waist, arching her against him as his length claimed her incrementally, and she stifled a whimper against the back of her fist.

He settled there, unmoving. He needed to know she wanted him every moment, to hear her beg.

'– Please –'

His hips began to twist against her in a languid rhythm. Gradually, his pace increased, and her gasps with it. When moans spilled from her lips, he bore down and sank his teeth into her neck.

'Say my name,' he hissed into her ear.

'Highness –'

'Say my _name_.'

'_Loki_,' she mewled, writhing beneath him as sweet release rolled through her.

He drew out as usual to string his pearls across her stomach – but she was still shuddering so alluringly, grasping for him. After one strand he plunged back into her clutch with a groan and marked her as his own.

When their flesh and blood and breath slowed, her thighs locked around his waist, and her bruised mouth sought his in feverish kisses, catching him by surprise. His lips broke from hers into a smile. 'Easy, little crow. Easy.'

Loki rolled off her, but with a strange reluctance that troubled him. Maybe it was because he was headed into hostile enemy territory tomorrow, or that he'd not finished inside a woman before, but as soon as he released her he found himself compelled to draw her back into his arms. Sigyn curled tight against his chest, her nightdress bunched between her damp thighs.

* * *

Sigyn woke the next morning in her own bed in the Madame's quarters, a solid weight beneath her arm – the book the Prince had promised.

She raced through it eagerly, pausing only to eat, and consuming the insights added by his meticulous annotations. She could not help but imagine his slender hands carefully scribing each word, only to recall the sensations those hands had wrought from her skin the previous night, and she periodically had to stop and fan her cheeks or sip some tea. She read late into the night, until she fell asleep by the candlelight.

When next her eyes drifted open, a pair of green ones met them. Instead of her warm pillows, she felt cool tiles beneath her.

'Much more graceful this time.'

Sigyn blinked. Prince Loki was again resting on his elbows on the edge of his bath, staring at her. His hair was windswept and stringy with sweat. She sat up with a smile, folding her legs beneath her. 'How did it go?'

'Awry,' he answered. 'Thor's diplomatic skills all but incited war with Jotunheim. And he's been banished,' he added. 'To Midgard.'

Her jaw dropped in shock.

'I know.' He shook his head in disbelief.

She slipped smoothly into the water beside him. 'How are _you_?' she queried, her fingertips taking stock of the bruises and grazes that littered his skin.

He relaxed into her touch with a shrug. 'More or less intact.'

Sigyn cupped water in her palms and he bobbed down for her to release it over his head. 'So, did you write poetry in the snow with Jotun blood?' she jested with a lilt of laughter in her voice, fingers slipping into his hair to lather it.

It tugged a fleeting smile from him. 'A masterpiece,' he confirmed with husky relish, and dunked his head beneath the water to rinse off the soap.

Sigyn had a cloth ready when he burst from the surface, shaking his hair back off his forehead. She ran it over him gently, careful not to press the forming bruises. When she noticed him flexing his left fist, she took hold of his wrist, turning it upwards to inspect. 'Sprained?'

'I'm not sure.' He stared down at his arm, his brows drawn in genuine confusion.

Her head tilted as she peered up at him. 'You seem preoccupied,' Sigyn noted.

'A lot has happened.'

Something was troubling him, more than he was letting on. She studied the sombre set of his features, and found him still lovely. His hurt was magnetic, drawing her heart into her throat. Risking insolence, she dared to pry, 'Is it something sorcerous? Something I could undo –'

In a flash of movement the Prince clutched her sharply and silenced her with his mouth. The hunger in his touch took her breath away, and her lips softened to his as she went limp in his grip.

'Something to distract me,' he requested in a rasp.

Against his lips she whispered, 'Come to the bed.'

Sigyn took him by the hand and led him there, where she nudged him onto his back and slid beside him.

Settling onto her elbow, she slung her leg across his hips, and reached to trace the fine angle of his jaw with her fingertips. She had never imagined such dark beauty could call on her. She dropped her head and tugged his bottom lip with her teeth, drawing it into a smile.

When his chin rose for a kiss she drew away teasingly, and gently crawled atop him. Her fingers slid into his hair to cradle his neck, lifting his lips to hers. He tugged her nightdress down her shoulders, and set about unfastening the front of the gown so that he might grab handfuls and mouthfuls of her soft flesh.

When she was ready Sigyn sat up and leant on a hand placed carefully between his bruises, reaching behind her to caress him. He stirred quickly in her grasp. She slid down against him and bent to recapture his mouth in a kiss, dipping the tip of him in the wet heat that had pooled between her legs. His hands slid up her thighs to clutch her rump beneath her loosened gown, and Sigyn gasped as he split her slit on his swollen hardness.

He let out a long sigh as they sank together, and then tugged her hips, encouraging her to rock against him.

Loki marvelled at the delightful creature astride him. She'd proven to be a fortuitous choice indeed. He'd never known such devotion, such reverence. His tongue slicked his bottom lip as he watched his subject slave on her Prince, bent over him, broken by lust. A chuckle purred in his throat.

'What?' Sigyn panted, slowing as she tilted her head with a smile.

'You please me,' he hissed sweetly, and his hand slid up her stomach to brush her jewel with his thumb.

Sweat dewed behind her knees and down her back as her skin grew fevered. She gasped his name, calling to him through the storm building inside of her, and he drew himself up to nuzzle her neck as she came undone. And in the moment before his groan of release, a word dripped from his tongue that he never meant, that she would treasure like the jewel in her flesh.

After he shrank inside her she curled against his side and settled in to sleep, his utterance echoing in her mind like a lullaby.

_Darling._


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

In the aftermath of Thor's banishment, Loki lost as much as he gained.

The plot to prove the Crown Prince unworthy of the throne had unravelled in his favour, advancing his own candidacy. After Thor's failed show of force against Jotunheim, it now fell to Loki to address the growing threat posed by Laufey where the Allfather would not. His most daring feat yet was stirring in his imagination, one which would swiftly disable the enemy Realm. But the risk was great; involving luring Laufey himself into the palace. If he failed, he would earn a punishment far greater than Thor had, but if he succeeded, Odin would surely recognise his worth at last.

Loki found that the more his schemes grew in their duplicity, the more troubled was his sleep and the more he treasured the gem of sincerity stowed in his bed. He kept Sigyn for longer periods during the day, delving into ever more rigorous exercises in sorcery. He spent hours teasing out the textures of her talent and expanding on her skill where he could, sharpening her sense of _seidr_ as he taught her various structures of enchantments, the weave of their webs increasing in complexity until her brow beaded with sweat. In return she kept him sated, leaving him exhausted on his pillows. Her body became a harbour in the brewing storm that was his situation.

His little crow seemed content, but Loki was slowly coming to the realisation that the perfect whore he'd created was too good for it. A time would come when he couldn't presume to cage her any longer, and every step of progress she made with him was a step away from him and out of this palace. Filed away in his study was a letter of recommendation he'd penned to the most prominent school in Vanaheim, outlining her talent and dedication. His time with her gained a sense of finiteness, a torment that added another dimension to his hunger. Sometimes he seized her over a chart or device, already trying to memorise her with his skin as he took her amongst books and parchment and stolen relics. Her responsiveness never failed to surprise him. She kissed him long after, until he hardened again inside her and they wrung each other's nerves of comfort.

Sigyn had not failed to realise her ability to break the connection between her jewel and his bell, and flee. As she had done so she noticed the Prince's cool control slipping, and his need for her company started to show. He touched her as if he were trying to work another enchantment into her very flesh and blood, to bind her to him with claws that dug deeper than any piercing. She was permitted to speak his name with the last breath of her little death, and each time it tasted sweeter on her tongue, until she recited it like an incantation, cursing herself to his service.

More than anything she appreciated how fortunate she was for His Highness's tutelage. She devoured his lessons, intent on taking full advantage of her opportunity to learn from one of the best. She would never leave his bed.

* * *

'Sigyn, are you _listening_?'

The Prince was teaching her the subtle sensations emitted by some of the finer currents of _seidr_, his hand spread at her back, his murmurs caressing the nape of her neck like a trickle of dark treacle.

Sigyn had just felt bittersweet contentment settle around her shoulders like a thick cloak, and her outstretched fingers had faltered. Her heart skipped a beat as adoration rooted deep in her bones, thickened her blood. She could not go on. She slowly turned to him with eyes soft with sentiment. 'Thank you for your kindness,' she effused.

Alarm soured his expression. 'You think me kind?' he sneered. 'You're enslaved here as my plaything because you're unmarriagable.'

Those were the words that struck from his tongue, but not the meaning she felt in his touch. 'Maybe I don't see it that way anymore,' Sigyn returned.

Something dangerous glinted in his eyes. She gasped as he seized her by the hair and threw her over his desk. Her hands scrambled to fasten on the piles of books strewn across it as he pushed her over the edge by the small of her back.

'I'm not known for kindness,' he growled as he dragged her gown up her thighs.

Her lips curved with delight. 'Oh but you give me _everything_ I want,' Sigyn gasped hoarsely.

'Only by design.'

'It's all the same to m–'

A hand slipped beneath her tousled hair to grip her throat while more fingers dug into her hip, pinning her in place as he speared her silken depths, driving a plaintive cry from her lips. She was still slick with cream she'd milked from him the night before, and Sigyn bowed gratefully into his hand as she was stuffed full of the sorcerer's lust, offering him the subjugation he craved.

Her master ravished her in ragged strokes, but she had been in such a state of excitement all afternoon that her release was not far away, and what he thought was a punishingly unrelenting pace only drove her further to the edge of bliss. Sigyn shuddered, mewling loudly to spite him. She heard a gasp, and then he was panting, sullying her deeply, and she knew she had won.

She rolled beneath him, flush with her victory. 'Truly the kindest man I've ever known,' she chuckled breathlessly.

His glare was one of bitter defeat. 'I'm done with you for today,' he sniffed in a clipped tone. Her bell appeared in his hand, and he shoved her down as he rang it.

As the desk disappeared beneath her Sigyn landed on a rug in her own quarters. She lay there, heart still racing, grinning to herself. His lingering essence tickled her thighs as it seeped into her gown, and her smile stretched into a giggle. She couldn't have imagined the trickster's game would twist on him and turn in her favour. He required her desire for his own satisfaction, but recoiled from the depth of her affections. He was the one trapped.

She had disturbed a card game. The gathered girls emitted a flurry of whispers as they stared down at _Prince Loki's bedwarmer_, cackling madly on the floor in a dishevelled mess.

This cursed arrangement was her greatest blessing.

* * *

The next time Sigyn found herself in Loki's study, she was startled. His frame was encased in elaborate bronze armour, a dark emerald cape cascading from his gilded shoulders to his boots.

'Are you really Prince Regent?' she grinned. The other girls had been paying attention to her since news had spread of the King's unexpected Odinsleep.

He nodded, but did not return her smile. His stern expression was all the more intimidating with the armour. She was used to his skin, but he was shielded from her, distant.

'What's wrong?' she asked and stepped forward, turning her palm to him.

He stiffened like a bronze statue and her hand fell. 'Nothing,' he said, too quickly, in a voice that was husky with grief. She searched his face worriedly – a storm swirled in his bloodshot eyes.

'What's happened?' she urged in alarm.

'I'm releasing you from service,' he announced abruptly.

Her lips parted in shock. 'Have I displeased you?'

'No. I'm ... sending you to Vanaheim, for tutelage. Where you belong.'

Sigyn should have been overjoyed, but she felt a painful tug in her chest. She should have known that doing her job too well might incur this. Better for him to end the game than risk losing it. She shook her head. 'You don't have to do that, Your Highness. I'm learning so much from you.'

_I'm having so much fun with you._

'You're worthy of better than the bed of a monster.'

'_What?_' she gaped._'_What do you mean?'

Loki bared his teeth in a sneer of disgust. 'Jotun blood flows in my veins,' he spat, 'concealed from me until now. It is why I _never_ had a chance of inheriting the throne. Why your position here is _far _beneath you.'

As much as this surprised her, Sigyn could hardly care for the legitimacy of his lineage. 'Whatever your heritage you're a Prince – _ruling_ Prince of Asgard, and I ...'

_Live for the moment you summon me. Live to learn your ways. Live to serve you._

'… I don't want to go,' she finished impudently.

'The arrangement has been made,' he concluded.

Sigyn stared at him. It was all happening too quickly. They'd only just begun. She clutched at the hollow opening within her stomach and her fingertips hitched on her jewel. 'You can't send me away,' she whispered in a voice quickly congealing with tears, '– I'm yours.'

His features were maddeningly resigned as he reached for her bell. 'Not anymore,' he muttered.

A sob of exasperation slid from her throat as she watched his fine fingers close over the bell, and tears slipped from her lashes. 'You should have stuck with those bitches who hated you,' she choked in a sudden burst of anger, '– rather than risk actually getting what you _wanted_.'

'You've no idea what I want,' Loki snapped.

She emitted a shuddering scoff. 'You're a damned liar.'

At that his searing gaze appeared to implode, and dropped to his fist. He spoke through gritted teeth. 'So what's new.'

He opened his fingers.

'Wait –'

'Goodbye.'

'Wait!'

He lifted the bell.

'_I love y_–'

Her frail voice was swept away by the ring of the bell, along with every trace of her, leaving only a faint indent in the fur on the floor.

With a sharp flick of his hand, Loki flung the bell into the fireplace as if it were scalding hot. He turned his gaze away from the violet fire, jaw tightening into a scowl as he leant over the desk, hands gripping the edge.


	6. Epilogue

_Cheers __reader__s for the reviews/follows/likes, it's nice to know I'm not posting into a totally empty void!__  
Monsoon__:__Thanks for __your __comments__, __to answer your questions__: Since _Avengers_ Loki has increasingly considered sentiment a threat, and he gives Sigyn a chilly reception out of shame, __which I tried to depict __with points about his disheveled state and how his character has warped since their affair__. The deal Sigyn made with Thor was __simply __that he ha__d__ need of Loki__'s help to defeat Malekith__, and she __felt in__debt__ed__ to Loki __for her freedom__, and possessed __the means to break him out. __Lastly, a__s a royal Prince Loki's __marriage __prospects __we__re restricted to__ nobility and he __believed he __c__ould n__ot permit himself genuine love for a __slave__. __But as you'll see, __ultimately __Loki does what he wants ;__P_

* * *

**Epilogue**

* * *

The King wasn't sleeping.

With Gungnir in his hand and the Realm at his feet, he ruled over the day. But the night ruled over him. Tossing and turning in his furs, pacing his bedchamber; his mind could not rest from its sedulous tracing of every step in the maze of treachery he tread. Rehearsing his routines, honing the rhythms of his speech, mapping the subtle tweaks he would make to the law.

As he slouched upon the newly reconstructed throne, he dislodged a glass key from his sleeve, letting it slip into his palm. He toyed with the glasswork curiously, admiring the elegant _seidr_ infused within it. Not for the first time, His Majesty privately puzzled over the loyalty Sigyn had shown in coming to his aid.

Each time three words echoed through his mind in answer, three words wept by an abandoned pet. And he wondered, was is possible she still bore his brand, hidden beneath her robes?

He just wanted to sleep.

In the blink of an eye the Allfather reappeared in a passageway leading from the throne room. In another, a guard emerged from the door and strode through the corridors that wound through to a now-deserted wing of the palace. With a cursory glance behind him, Loki stole into the chambers that were once his.

As he crossed the floor to the fireplace, his mind rushed past all the objections he might have made – he could _never_ return to the way things were; he had _nothing_ to offer her anymore; she probably wasn't even in Asgard. On his knees he reached into the fireplace, curiosity clamouring in his chest as he batted the coals aside and combed the ashes, digging for the treasure he had discarded.

He may be King, but he could not celebrate it. The truth was he'd had no one with whom to share his victory. His vanity demanded he restore the humiliation he'd suffered under her gaze in the dungeons. To prove his recreation to the only subject he could trust –

Loki's fingertips pinched something beneath the long-cold coals. Settling back onto his heels, he rubbed off the ash coating a blackened silver bell, and brought it to his lips to blow its clapper clean. He rose to his feet and stared at it for a long time, unsure of what to hope for. He broke out of his reverie and gingerly rang it.

In a heartbeat Sigyn stood before him. A book sprang from her hands, falling between them in a rustle of parchment. She made no move to retrieve it, forgetting it completely as they stared at each other, unspeaking.

He had called. She still came.

Loki bent and swept up the book. 'Here I thought I'd set my little crow free,' he began – and was startled, for a moment, by the sound of his own voice. 'But lo, she flies back to me.'

He offered the book to her. Hesitantly accepting it, Sigyn found her voice. 'How did you survive?'

'Does it matter?' he returned.

She glanced toward the doors. 'Does anyone know you're here?'

A wicked smirk bent his lips as he shook his head.

'What face have you taken?'

In response Loki's face momentarily rippled into the visage of none other than Odin. Sigyn's hand flew to her mouth to cover a gasp at the scale of his feat. Then her shoulders sank in disbelief. 'You're conquering realms and I'm just trying to get by.'

'You're not doing so badly, Spellbreaker.'

She gave a wan smile. 'Thanks to you,' she admitted.

Sigyn had arrived in the best school in Vanaheim, where she received the education of a Princess – all expenses paid for by a benefactor who broke her heart. He'd freed her from servitude, placing her exactly where he thought she deserved to be, and yet she'd been unable to unshackle herself from his mastery. Even when news reached her of the destruction of the Rainbow Bridge after Loki had turned it on his ancestors, and then vanished into the dark abyss of space, only to reappear on Midgard mad with the power of an Infinity Stone. She'd become determined to free him from Odin's imprisonment, and when her treason was rewarded with word of his death in battle, she had succumbed to a widow's grief. Being ineligible for marriage, Loki was the only man Sigyn would ever belong to.

'Tell me,' he asked, 'how did Thor find you?'

'I found _him_,' revealed Sigyn. 'I knew you were the only one who could help him.'

'And why did you see fit to repay your freedom with my own?'

'I didn't believe you were the monster they made you out to be.'

Self loathing flared in his gaze. 'Then you're a fool –'

'Then I'm a fool.'

He fell silent, his insult thwarted by her admission. Loki glanced down at the tarnished bell in his ash-stained fingers. 'You could have removed the enchantment any time you wished.'

She looked through him achingly. Longing welled in her eyes. 'Yours was an enchantment I couldn't break,' she confessed.

Her sentiment would be the death of him. Loki huffed in annoyance against the pang piercing his gut and derision leapt to his defence. 'Sigyn,' he sneered, 'you can't possibly still claim –'

'Why have you called me now?' she challenged, gesturing to the room.

His wearied gaze hitched on her, and went heavy with wistfulness. After everything, he was back in the same room, imploring her servitude. He wondered if he even deserved to start over again from this point. His eyes fell to her slippered feet; his voice dropped to a murmur. 'My sleep is troubled ...'

The book was flung aside. In two steps she was on him, seizing the collar of his shirt and pulling his mouth down on hers.

Loki froze in place. In three years he had been touched only by violence, and it had left him cold. His muscles jarred, thawed, shifted from combat to ardour. Lips parting to her, Loki's fingers slid into her dark mane of hair to cup her neck, clutching her with all the delicacy and desperation as he would an illusion. He hadn't been home til he'd come home to _her_.

'Then let me tire you, Your Majesty,' she breathed against his lips, pulling him harder against her, and his breeches strained in response.

Time dissolved between them – he was back on the throne and she was back in his bed and it was like they'd never left. He stumbled forward, backing her against his dust-filmed desk. Without breaking the kiss Sigyn pulled herself up onto the edge and parted her knees to him. Her hand slid beneath his tunic against the taut contours of his abdomen, and he slipped the cloth from his shoulders urgently, needing more than anything to go back to that time in this place before he knew he was a monster, an orphan, a pawn.

Suddenly his skin tingled beneath her hand with a sickeningly familiar shift of _seidr_.

Loki jerked back and gasped in horror as he caught sight of his arms – the illusion was peeling from his skin, leaving behind the blue pallor of his heritage.

'Restore it,' he hissed sharply, as his eyes seethed scarlet.

Sigyn held them with a gaze not disgusted, nor disappointed, but intense with intrigue. Her fingers hooked on his waistband. 'Not until I've had all of you.'

He couldn't argue with her legs curling behind him and drawing him between them, nor the worship by her tongue upon his collarbone to his throat. He clenched his eyes.

'_Nothing_ could break the spell you have on me,' Sigyn whispered into his ear, and grasped his shoulders, trailing kisses up his jaw, over his chin.

She was marked as his, though she wore no ring. They'd exchanged no vows, but she was sworn to him. She could never call him husband – only master. But she belonged to him irrevocably.


End file.
